Dinomorphs Four: Acts
by Gryphinwyrm7
Summary: The Pemalite ship is almost repaired, and the Dinomorphs are ready. They have what they came for, a means of fighting The One. Now the key is to get back to Earth-Andalite space and put it to good use. Unfortunately to do that, they must acquire a new morph. A dinosaur that is nearly extinct again. A Dinosaur that is being HUNTED back into extinction, by alien predators...
1. The Hunt Begins

Chapter One

My name is Menderash-Postill-Fostill. I am not an Andalite. Not anymore. I sacrificed my Andalite body, my Andalite identity, to reclaim my lost honor.

Andalites were forbidden from entering the Kelbrid Quarantine Zone. Humans were not.

So I morphed. I morphed into a human. And I never demorphed.

It is a difficult concept for many Andalites to comprehend. To willingly become a _nothlit_. It is considered shameful in our society. But it would have been equally shameful for me to remain an Andalite while my Prince needed me. So I morphed, and didn't look back.

My human morph is, of course, a _Frolis Maneuver. _Five humans I encountered on my first day stationed on earth donated the DNA. They were quite friendly. Two males and three females. One of the males even paid for my first Cinnabon. Which was magical. I would always be grateful to those human DNA donors. I doubt they knew what I had done, though. They couldn't possibly know that I had trapped myself in the human form composed of their genetic codes.

I barely even remembered what they looked like. Once a _Frolis Maneuver _is composed, you no longer need to focus on the DNA donors to morph the body. Focusing on the _Frolis_ form itself will do.

War-Prince Escafil is a genius however. He has constructed a new technology that will allow _nothlits_ such as myself to morph again. But with our templates reset. The bodies we became trapped in are the new default. He experimented with many Taxxons, Yeerks, and even a few humans who had all become _nothlits_ to compose this technology. It was sheer brilliance.

I was recently treated with it. Thus, I am now morph capable once more. But my human body is my default now. I cannot morph my old morphs, from before I became a _nothlit. _I had a Djabala, Kafit Bird, Hork-Bajir, Taxxon, Leeran, Garatron, and of course, a human morph.

Now those morphs are gone. Replaced, even. Since being treated with the new technology, I acquired an earth bird called a Harris Hawk. And then I was given a second chance at honor. I followed three humans who had gotten wind of Pemalite technology. Technology that could cure, or end a new threat to the Human-Andalite alliance.

The One. A singular entity, in viral form. It absorbs life into itself. It has done so with Prince Aximillli. To reclaim my honor, I must free Aximilli from its clutches. But I cannot. Not at this time, anyway. But I will. I swear by my now non-existent tail-blade.

I was not in human form now. I was in morph. A Deinonychus. The term is quite unfamiliar to Andalites, and even most humans, I would wager. It is a dinosaur. A type of earth-animal that no longer exists. It has gone extinct.

Extinct on Earth, but not on _Terra Nova_; the planet that I was on now. Terraformed in the past, it was transformed with billions of formerly extinct Earth-Animals. Mostly of the Dinosaur type. So my human friends now called themselves "Dinomorphs". I suppose, that in a way, I too am a Dinomorph.

The deinonychus resembles a brightly-colored Hork-Bajir, but smaller, and with no blades. It has a stiff board-like tail it carries in the air behind it, to act as a balance. It has three-fingered clawed hands, and its feet resemble Hork-Bajir feet, but with one difference. It had a large, sickle-like claw, not dissimilar to an Andalite tail-blade.

It was a predator, that hunted in packs, like Earth-Wolves, or Desbadian _Karrablasts_. An expert hunter.

Which was good…Because I needed to be an expert hunter to bring down my quarry.

After all…I was hunting Andalites.


	2. The Hunt Continues

Chapter Two

I spotted my prey, and crept closer. A single Andalite in a field, his head erect, stalk-eyes scanning the horizon for predators. And an all-too familiar face.

I kept my scythe-like claw retracted. I had no intention of killing, or even harming this Andalite. I just wanted to catch him. In a way this Andalite was my son. In a way, he was also me. He was a clone.

A clone of my original, Andalite DNA pattern. Produced by a fluke of alien technology, but also my one chance to be "myself" again. If I could but acquire his DNA, then the morph of my original Andalite self would be within my blood, encapsulated in a naltron molecule…Just waiting for me to access…Just waiting for me to use to become _me_ again.

I wanted it. I wanted it so badly…But to claim it…I had to acquire it. So I stalked…Closer and closer to the Andalite.

The deinonychus mind was perturbed. At this point in the hunt, it would be signaling other deinonychus to be taking positions surrounding the "prey". But I had done this on my own. The Dinomorphs did not really trust me, not that I blamed them. I had blackmailed them to come with them to _Terra Nova. _It stood to reason that they would not like or trust me.

I was fine with that.

I crept closer and closer. A stalk-eye turned in my direction, and I froze. The eye-stalk lingered for a few seconds, and then began scanning the forests again. _Terra Nova_ had many fierce predators. I was certain that my clone had already encountered a few of them.

I crept through the grass, closer and closer to my quarry. I wondered vaguely, if this had been what it had been like for the _Vornekern _or the ancient _Kafit Karakiller _in ancient times. Stalking unsuspecting Andalites, while being ever aware of our natural defenses, like the stalk-eyes that could see in all directions. Or the deadly tail blade that I secretly longed to have again.

Of course the _Vornekern _and the _Kafit Karakiller_ were long since extinct. Had been for thousands of years. The Andalite homeword, or as humans had started calling it, Andalia, had no major predatory species. Nothing there hunted Andalites. We had exterminated any species that posed a threat to us.

The _Kafit Karakiller _had one living relative. The smaller, flight-capable _Kafit Bird _that is popular with young Andalites for morphing. The _Vornekern _had no living relatives. An evolutionary dead end…Because their prey had rendered them extinct.

I crouched low…And pounced, springing out of the grass at my prey.

The Andalite clone reacted, his stalk-eyes snapping on me and his tail whipped at my head faster than I could see. The blade stabbed me in my left eye, and I screamed in pain. A gutteral, animalistic sound.

My clone then bounded away. Full Andalite speed. A good 60 miles per hour, if it wanted to. Another Andalite defense against predators. Our awesome speed. Nature had designed the Andalite efficiently. We were perfectly built to evade, avoid, and combat predators.

I had no chance of catching my clone. No chance of acquiring him. No chance of being an Andalite again.

I demorphed. Not to Andalite. To human, since that was my default state. It is truly a bizarre thing…To demorph into a body that is not the one you were born with. I wondered if that was how Tobias felt every time he became a hawk again.

My three-clawed fingers shriveled up and split apart into caramel colored hands. Fur sprouted from the top of my head and my face, as my snout retracted inwards, and my sharp, dromaesaur teeth became flat ordinary human teeth.

And my tail sucked into my spine and vanished. That was always the worst part. It was comforting to have a tail, even if it was nothing like an Andalite tail. Now I had nothing.

I finished demorphing into human, and then remorphed into a Sordes, which is a small flying reptile, rather like an earth bat, or a Korla _Klepthiir. _

Apparently, upon the ancient earth, it was flying reptiles, not birds, who controlled the skies. Birds existed, but were a distinctive minority.

I flew west until arriving at a large green ship. It vaguely resembled an earth-canine.

It had also been sheered in half. The other half lay approximately 300 yards northeast of the main body of the ship. This was the ship we had traveled to _Terra Nova_ in.

The humans I came here with…The Dinomorphs, were all waiting outside the ship. Jason, Emily and Melissa. Three humans. But these were not warriors. Not fighters. I had served with the humans, with the _Animorphs_ Jake, Marco, and Tobias. They were casual, but they were true warriors. True fighters.

These humans, Jason, Emily, and Melissa, they were not fighters. They were recreational morphers. But they were handling themselves well in extraordinary circumstances.

I landed and demorphed.

"S'up, Mendy?" Jason asked, using casual Earth-English slang and a nickname.

I stiffened.

"I was…," I hesitated. "Hunting."

Jason gave me an odd look.

"Our larder's pretty full of fish and protoceratops," Jason commend. "What were you hunting?"

"I was honing my skills," I said, a half-truth. "I was born an herbivore, I am unaccustomed to the idea of hunting. I felt the need to try it in a more…Active manner."

"Any luck?" Emily asked brightly. Humans seem to often ascribe random chance to events that clearly require skills to succeed at.

"No," I said. "Not as such, no. My quarry eluded me."

"What were you morphed as—?" Melissa started to ask, but was interrupted by the arrival of a steel-and-ivory android with earth-canine features.

A Chee.

The ship we had come in was hers.

"We have a problem," Erica said.

"We have lots of problems," Jason commented dryly.

"This is a pretty big one," Erica replied. "The reason I asked you all to come here…The Nano-Repair matrix has run out of raw materials for the repairs. It can't finish fixing the ship without the metal to replace the parts it has lost."

"Am I missing something here?" Melissa asked, gesturing obviously towards the pile of scrap metal that was once the aft section of the ship.

"Yep," Erica said. "There's plenty of raw materials to complete the repairs, right over there…300 yards away. The nanites have a radial limitation of 43 yards."

"Well," Jason said. "We could move the ship." 

"Jason," Erica commented. "Do you have any idea just how much metal is over there? We're talking about an entire aft section of a Pemalite ship here. Your T. rex, Spinosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Chasmasaur morphs COMBINED with my Chee-Strength couldn't budge that thing. You're big…but you don't have the raw tonnage to move that."

"Could we not simply break the scrap metal down into smaller, more manageable pieces, and move it over bit by bit?" I offered.

"Ramonite-Titanium alloy?" Erica asked me back.

{Ah,} I said, switching to thought-speak. It was one of the ways I "kept myself Andalite" on the inside. I could still thought-speak. If I was feeling particularly human, I would speak Earth-English out loud. But if I felt more "Andalite" I would thought-speak.

"Indestructable?" Jason asked.

{Not strictly indestructible,} I said. {It WAS cleaved in half by a beam weapon. But as far as we are concerned, yes, indestructible. Nothing we have on this planet will cut that metal.}

"Not even our own beam weapon?" Emily asked, referring to a device similar to a Dracon Beam that we had stored back at our base of operations.

"Not nearly enough power in that little thing to cut it up," I said.

"Well this bites," Melissa said. "We finally found the Pemalite compound, but now we can't get it off-world."

"Indeed," I commented. "It is indeed frustrating. No land-based species in the known galaxy has the size and strength to move that much mass."

"Well," Jason commented slyly. "That's…Not ENTIRELY true."

Jason was something of an amateur expert on prehistoric earth fauna from this era. And clearly he know knew something.

"I haven't seen any," Jason said. "But given all that we know about this world, I have to…I HAVE to assume that there are some around."

"Some what?" Melissa asked.

"Titanosaurs," Jason said. "Ultrasaurus, Seismosaurus. Futalognkosaurus, Argentinasaurus, and the largest of all sauropods…The largest known land animal to ever walk the planet…The mighty Dreadnaughtus."


	3. The Hunters Strike

Chapter Three

I flapped my thin leathery wings as I fluttered down and landed in front of a large, tri-dome shaped compound. The morph I was in was called a Tapejara. It is an pterasaur, much like the Sordes, but larger, and with an unusual looking crest on it's head.

The Tapejara mind underneath my own was observing the forest below. The Tapejara was looking at the lakes and rivers for fish to eat. But I was looking for the creatures that Jason described.

Frankly, I thought he was over exaggerating. Earth is one of the most genetically diverse planets in the known galaxy. Even the Andalite Home World doesn't compare. We have a mere 500 species in our entire system. And no land animal even remotely reaches the size he was describing.

The largest land animals I had ever seen were Jason's Tyrannosaurus morph, and Melissa's Spinosaurus morphs. While I had seen holos of larger creatures in my academy years, they were not that much larger, and they were few and far between.

The largest land animal on earth is the Elephant, and the largest sea-based animal is the blue whale. The whale is so large and heavy that it can only survive in water.

The sizes described by Jason seemed biological impossibilities. I couldn't fathom an actual creature that size walking the earth.

And I had yet to be proven wrong. After scouring the forests for many hours and covering quite a vast distance, I saw many different animals. Some quite unusual. I'm sure that Jason would be able to identify them, but in more ways than one, they were alien to me.

I flittered back to the compound where we had been living, coming in for a landing in front of the entrance. Andalites prefer open air, living in our scoops. As many Andalite visitors to earth have already discovered, humans prefer living within enormous boxes. Structures similar to our spaceports.

This dome was a very similar structure. It's orgins a complete mystery to me. But possibly the result of meddling with the time stream. It was not a thought I liked to dwell on.

I demorphed back to human form, and rapped on the door with my human fist. Moments later, it opened for me and Emily let me it.

I noticed right away that Erica was inside, and had dropped her hologram to interface with the laboratory computer.

"What is occurring?" I asked.

"Erica figured out that there was a DNA based GPS tracking system in place," Jason replied. "Most of the satellites are not functioning anymore, but the one over the plateau IS. She's rifling through the computer logs to try and see if there's any Titanosaurs in it, and furthermore, to see if there are any anywhere on the plateau."

"You can read DNA?" I asked curiously.

"Not easily," Erica responded. "The DNA molecule is one of the most complex structures in the Universe."

"I know," I said. "It takes even the most advanced Andalite supercomputers several hours to read a single strand of DNA."

"It takes me about 20 minutes," Erica said. "And then I need to process the DNA pattern to determine what the animal or plant is supposed to look like."

"Could you track any pattern on the planet?" I asked. "Not just the Titanosaurs?"

"I'm limited to the plateau," Erica said. "Cause just one working satellite, also I need to FIND the Titanosaur DNA in the records, and THEN I can track it. But if it's on the plateau, and I already have the DNA on file, then yes, yes I can."

"Could you…Track, say…An Andalite DNA pattern?" I asked.

I chose to ignore the looks of what I assume was human pity from Jason, Emily, and Melissa.

"Your morph clone is about three miles west of here," Erica said, in a human tone of voice I did not recognize. The Chee may be androids, but they are sentient androids, and furthmore, have spent thousands of years among humans. They understood humankind far more easily than I did. They practically were human, despite their technological and intelligence difference.

"I did not-," I started to say.

"Whoa!" Erica interrupted. "Found the record for Triceratops. DEFINITELY Triceratops DNA."

"Oh cool!" Emily said brightening.

"Oh…" Erica drooped. "No Matches found on the plateau. There aren't any Triceratops up here."

"Oh," Emily said, physically drooping over. "I really wanted a Trike morph."

"What's this?" Erica said, suddenly. "Sauropod…"

"Yes?" Jason said, immediately leaping to his feet.

"Ding, ding, ding!" Erica said. "We have a Titanosaur! Tracking!"

I could see that the humans were now quite excited. I was still skeptical.

"Oh wow…" She murmured. "Not many left. 42 total."

"Life, the Universe, and Everything?" Emily said, quite nonsensically.

"Not for them," Erica replied. "I count three distinct herds. The smallest of which is also the closest. Four members, about 100 miles northeast."

"A hundred miles!" Jason yelped.

"Quite a distance," I agreed.

"You'll need to pack some supplies," Erica said. "And a communicator of some kind, so I can give you up to date information on the herd's movement."

"We found a thought-speak communicator within the storage bay," I suggested.

"Yeah," Jason said. "But you're the only one who can use it. Thought-Speak communicators require that the users be capable of thought-speak even when not in morph. It'd be a one way communicator."

"Muk-Luk can thought-speak," Emily interjected. "Thought-Speak is natural for the Kelbrid too. He speaks out loud through his suit's vocal processor out of politeness."

It was true, I had on occasion heard the Kelbrid Thought-Speak. But that Emily had discerned that surprised me. The alien was quite guarded, and did not share much about himself. None of us had seen him beneath his armor. I couldn't even begin to guess as to the Kelbrid's nature.

"Muk-Luk and Erica on mission control then?" Jason asked.

"Sounds like a plan, Stan," Melissa said.

"Stan?" I asked.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

We flew. And flew. For hours and hours, until we reached the edge of the time limit. Then we landed and demorphed, remorphed and flew some more. We passed over miles of forest, jungle, and grasslands.

And then we saw them.

As I said, I had assumed that Jason had been exaggerating. If anything, he had been understating the size of the creatures. They towered over the treeline, dwarfing even the tallest of the trees. A mere for creature that could step on Jason's tyrannosaur morph. I am not even exaggerating.

The Tyrannosaur was to these beasts as the earth cat was to a large dog. 

{Whoa!} I heard Emily whisper in thought-speak.

{Behold the behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.} Jason said. He was obviously quoting something, though I wasn't sure what.

It was a somewhat flowery, if not apt description. These beasts did have tails as thick as any of the trees that they were wading through. They were not consuming grass, however, but casually snacking on just about any plant in their path. They were like gigantic suction tubes, snarfing up any leaf, branch, fruit, and even a few smaller trees in their path.

I flew over one, and began gliding the length of its body. As I examined the tail I saw a lot of scars and scrapes along it.

{Do these creatures use their tails as weapons?} I asked Jason as we circled them.

{When they were younger, almost certainly,} Jason said. {It's speculation but a lot of scientists think that sauropods used their tails like gigantic bullwhips to deter predators. The scars along their tails, along with fossils of fused spinal segments from their tail bones lend a lot of credence to that theory.}

{What predator in it's right mind is gonna attack THAT thing?} Melissa asked. {If it falls asleep on top of my spinosaur morph it would crush it. And that's the biggest thing I've ever acquired.}

{Well none now that these guys are fully grown,} Jason continued. {At this size, nothing will mess with them. Not even the Big Rex. Like elephants and Rhinos in Africa, their size is a deterrent. But just like elephants and rhinoceroses…They weren't always big. And the younger ones are easy prey for a predator that can get close enough to snatch one away from the herd.}

{Menderash} Muk-Luk's thought-speak voice echoed over the thought-speak communicator. {The Android has indicated that you are now in the vicinity of the creatures. Can you confirm visually?}

I relayed his message to the others.

{You'd have to be blind NOT to see them,} Jason said.

{I can confirm,} I responded.

{The Android says that there are four, can you confirm?}

{Correct. We see them.}

{The android says that all four are male, and slowly wandering in the general direction of another herd approximately thirty miles northwest of your location.}

{Erica says that they are male,} I relayed, simply.

{Male?} Melissa said. {No girls at all?}

{They might be like elephants,} Jason said. {Males and females travel in separate herds. Joining up once or twice a year to mate.}

{That is consistent with what Erica said.} I said.

{There's four of us,} Jason said. {Let's each acquire a different one in order to feed as much genetic diversity back into the biome as we can when the Clone Dome scans us.}

{How do we acquire one?} Emily wondered. {We land on the ground to acquire one and we get stepped on for sure.}

{Perhaps we could land on their backs?} I suggested. {They are quite massive, and our human hands and feet should be able to grip long enough to get the DNA.}

{I don't relish the thought of slipping and falling off of one of these guys…I'd be like falling from a ten story building…But I also don't have any better ideas.} Jason said.

{You gonna be okay Behemoth-back riding?} Emily asked Jason.

What followed was a few minutes of silence, upon which I eventually realized that Jason and Emily were now having a private-thought-speak conversation. Which was undoubtedly cut short by what occurred next.

The air pressure began to drop around us, and there was a faint whistling sound. The currents we were currently riding suddenly began changing underneath our wings unpredictably. Jason suddenly veered into a tree, Melissa shot up into the sky about a hundred feet above us…And then we saw the source of the atmospheric changes.

Three swirling vortexes had suddenly appeared in the air above the majestic titanosaurs.

{Menderash!} Jason called out from the tree he had crashed into. {Are those what I think that they are?}

{I…I do not know what they are,} I admitted.

{They look like…Z-Space windows…} Jason replied.

If I had human feet…Or even my Andalite feet, I'd have kicked myself. Of course that's what they were. But I had never seen one open in the atmosphere of a planet before. It was insanely dangerous. Beyond dangerous. Most starships had sensors that prevented them from exiting Zero Space within the gravity well of a celestial body. After all, one miscalculation and your ship is within the molten core of a planet like earth…Or being crushed by the intense pressures of the deep waters of Leera.

What sane species would open a Z-Space Window within the atmosphere of a planet?

The vortexes open wider, to let the ships out…But the laws of physics would not be denied. There is no atmosphere in Zero Space…So all the air was being sucked into the gates. This was the cause of the atmospheric disturbances that had sent us careening. And I realized in horror, that I was closest to the event horizon of the nearest gate.

I began flapping my Tapejara wings as fast and as hard as I could. Violently struggling to get as far away from the portal to certain death as I could. I saw a pair of sordes get sucked into one…

My doom was fast approaching…I didn't have the strength to fight the vacuum that was on the other side of the gate…And the ships emerged, and the gates closed with resounding cracks the instant that they were through.

They were not large ships by any means. Roughly the size of a Yeerk Bug Fighter. They vaguely resembled Skrit Na ships, but the resemblance was superficial upon closer inspection.

They were not saucers, so much as they were spheres. Gyrospheres magnetically held within concentric rings. Thus giving them a resemblance to the Skrit Na's infamous saucer shape…But not mirroring it perfectly.

The center gyroship's ring suddenly shifted from horizontal to vertical, which was apparently a signal to the other two. Blades, like a circular saw suddenly erupted from the ships gyroscopic rings. They began to spin.

{What the hell…} Jason started to say…

But he never finished…At that exact moment the three ships shot forward…and in rapid, brutal succession…Began to slaughter the titanosaurs.


End file.
